Donald Daniel Leslie (1922–2020)

2020年3月27日，著名的中國猶太教和伊斯蘭教歷史學家唐納德・丹尼爾・萊斯利在澳大利亞悉尼逝世。他1922 年 7 月 1 日出生於倫敦托特納姆，是阿爾弗雷德・萊斯利和阿達・妮・施耐德曼夫婦四個孩子中最小的一位。在獲得倫敦大學理學學士學位後，他 1943 年參軍，並於二戰結束時在比利時和荷蘭服役了六個月。然後他以志願兵學習日語，在巴基斯坦卡拉奇參加了為期 9 個月的速成訓練後，加入了日本廣島附近的吳市情報部隊。 1947 年，他回到英國，先後就讀於倫敦大學亞非學院和劍橋大學，1951 年取得中文學位証書，並於 1954 年獲得中國研究方面的文學碩士學位。這一切的研究進取都得益於他對數學和科學的濃厚興趣，他也因此獲得了為期六年優渥的獎學金，而這使他有幸在劍橋傑出的科技史學家李約瑟的指導下學習並且允許到中國交流兩年。遺憾的是，由於當時中國的政治狀況，去進行實地的交流和研究是不可能的而且他的論文 “Man and Nature: Sources on Early Chinese Biological Ideas”（人與自然：中國早期生物學概念的來源）並沒有像李約瑟那樣受到漢學評委們的高度肯定，也因此要授予的學位從博士降級到文學碩士。從 1958 年到 1960 年，他在耶路撒冷的希伯來大學擔任研究員，並（與阿馬提亞・波拉斯合作）出版了希伯來《論語》譯本。之後，他前往巴黎索邦大學攻讀中國學博士學位，其論文題目為 “Les procédés de raisonnement dans les textes confucéens jusqu’au premier siècle de notre ère”（公元一世紀前儒家文本中的推理規程），且他的導師是謝和耐教授。在澳大利亞國立大學從1963 年至 1970 年擔任研究員（包括在京都大學一年）後，他被任命為以色列臺拉維夫大學的副教授。他於 1972 年回到澳洲堪培拉高等教育學院（現堪培拉大學），成為歷史學方面的高級講師。研究之旅和參加研討會將他帶到了世界各地的許多學術機構，並將他引介給更多的專業同事，其中一些人與他合著出版，其數量也頗為可觀。 1988 年退休後，作為訪問學者，他仍在澳大利亞國立大學繼續研究了 13 年。作為一名學者，萊斯利對哲學有著濃厚的興趣，這在他早期的作品中已有記載。再後來，他痴迷於中國猶太教和伊斯蘭教方面的研究。在接下來的幾年裡，他將自己對書目的興趣應用到了他研究的主題上，即猶太教和伊斯蘭教，其成果有Jews and Judaism in Traditional China（傳統中國的猶太人和猶太教，1998）和 Islam in Traditional China（傳統中國的伊斯蘭教，2006），而這兩部作品都由華裔學志研究所出版。他的其他傑出專著有：The Survival of the Chinese Jews（中國猶太人的生存，1972 年）、Juifs de Chine（中國的猶太人，與榮振華合著，1980 年）、Islamic Literature in Chinese, Late Ming and Early Ch’ing（明末清初中國伊斯蘭教文學，1981 年）和 The Chinese-Hebrew Memorial Book of the Jewish Community of K’ai-feng（開封猶太社區的漢-希備忘錄，1984)。其中兩部已被譯成中文，即《中國的猶太人》（耿升譯自 Juifs de Chine，鄭州：中州古籍出版社，1992）和《伊斯蘭漢籍考》（楊大業譯自 Islamic Literature in Chinese，北京：出版社不詳，1994）。總之，誠摯感謝學者萊斯利的卓越貢獻，如今對中國猶太教和伊斯蘭教的研究才能立足於堅實的基礎且在不斷擴大當中。

It was with some delay that the news of the passing of Donald Daniel Leslie, the prominent historian of Judaism and Islam in China, spread in the scholarly community. He died already on 27 March 2020 at Sydney, Australia.¹

Donald Daniel Leslie in 2001.

Photo provided courtesy of the family.

He was born on 1 July 1922 as the youngest of four children of Alfred and Ada (née Schneiderman) Leslie in Tottenham, London. He joined the armed forces in 1943 after he had taken a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of London, and served six months in Belgium and Holland at the end of WWII. He then volunteered to learn Japanese, so he was attached to the Intelligence Corps at Kure, near Hiroshima, after a preliminary nine months crash course in Karachi (Pakistan). In 1947 he returned to England and attended first SOAS and then the University of Cambridge where he took a diploma in Chinese in 1951 and a Master of Letters (Chinese Studies) in 1954. This choice of study was triggered by Leslie’s strong interest in mathematics and the sciences, and as he was awarded a generous six-year Scarborough grant which allowed him to study under the outstanding historian of science, Joseph Needham, at Cambridge, and also two years in China, this option was attractive. But fate decided otherwise: Because of the political development in China the envisaged term of study and research there was out of the question, and Leslie’s thesis “Man and Nature: Sources on Early Chinese Biological Ideas” was not as highly regarded by the Sinological referees as by Needham, and the awarded degree was downgraded from Ph.D. to M.Litt.² So he decided to eventually emigrate to Israel. From 1958 to 1960 he was a Research Fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and published (with Amatsia Porath) a Hebrew translation of the Analects of Confucius that received the Tchernikowsky³ prize from Tel Aviv Municipality. He then went to Paris to take his doctorate in Chinese Studies at the Sorbonne, with a thesis on “Les procédés de raisonnement dans les textes confucéens jusqu’au premier siècle de notre ère,” his supervisor being Jacques Gernet.⁴ After spending the years 1963–1970 as a Research Fellow at the Australian National University (including a year at Kyoto University), he was appointed Associate Professor at Tel Aviv University but he returned to Canberra in 1972 to become Senior Lecturer in history at the Canberra College of Advanced Education (now University of Canberra). From 1972–1974 he also taught classical Chinese part-time at ANU and was frequently appointed as an external examiner for Ph.D. students in Chinese studies. In 1973 he obtained a three-years research grant from the Australian Research Grant Council on the topic “History of the Muslims in China from the T’ang to 1800.” Research trips and parti­cipation in conferences took him to many academic institutions all over the world and introduced him to many professional colleagues, with some of whom he co-authored numerous publications. Having taken retirement in 1988 he continued his research as Visiting Fellow at the ANU for another thirteen years.

In 1958 he had married Helga Selz who had come to England on a Kindertransport, thus escaping the Holocaust in Germany; the couple had three children.

As a scholar, Donald Leslie had a strong interest in philosophy which is documented by his earlier publications. Then the subject of Judaism in China, and finally Islam in China became dominant. In the 1960s when he was a researcher at the ANU and had Jeremy Davidson as an assistant, he developed an interest in bibliography which resulted in his seminal Author Catalogues of Western Sinologists (1966) and Catalogue of Chinese Local Gazetteers (1967). In later years he applied this experience to the main subjects of his work, namely Judaism and Islam, by his books Jews and Judaism in Traditional China (1998) and Islam in Traditional China (2006), thus proving himself a worthy bibliographer in the tradition of Rudolf Loewenthal (1904–1996). Both of these volumes were published by the Monumenta Serica Institute. Among his further outstanding monographs are The Survival of the Chinese Jews (1972), Juifs de Chine (with Joseph Dehergne, 1980; this work was awarded a prize by the Académie française), Islamic Literature in Chinese, Late Ming and Early Ch’ing (1981), and The Chinese-Hebrew Memorial Book of the Jewish Community of K’ai-feng (1984). Two of his books were translated into Chinese, namely Juifs de Chine in 1992 and Islamic Literature in Chinese in 1994.

Donald Leslie was a man of common sense. In his youth he felt attracted to mathematics and the history of science and was also interested in philosophy. In Tel Aviv he even taught (Chinese) philosophy but felt he knew too little to call himself a philosopher; he preferred the term historian. He was adaptable, made friends easily, loved his work, and, of course, his family. He enjoyed playing chess and bridge, enjoyed listening to classical music but lacked an artistic vein. His political sympathies were with Labour, his religious views were liberal, not dogmatic or orthodox. He showed empathy towards the Palestinians and appealed to Israel to return East Jerusalem and the West Bank after they had been conquered.

For himself he wished: “I hope to be remembered as a scholar, that is all.”⁵ And as motto to his Memoirs he chose the maxim of Rabbi Hillel, “Do not unto others what you would not want done to yourself” in parallel with synonymous quotes from Leviticus, Confucius and Jesus.

The present writer got into contact with Donald Leslie on his Author Catalogues, a pioneer reference work on Western scholars in Chinese Studies, and asked about the option of continuing this work – it was kindly granted. But the material assembled since then never reached the level of publication – it would need thorough and systematic editing which was prevented by other more urgent projects. The file has grown to almost 400 pages and serves as a useful internal reference tool. Donald Leslie had not forgotten about the project twenty years later and seemed disappointed to learn that publication was not in sight.

Another shared interest was the bibliography of Islamic literature in Chinese, which arose from the cataloguing of the collection of the Cleveland Public Library⁶ and Father Palladij’s (1817–1878) study Kitajskaja literatura magometan (1887), the preface to which was so aptly translated by Ludmilla Panskaya and Donald Leslie as Introduction to Palladii’s Chinese Literature of the Muslims (1977).

In September 1997 we met in person during an international conference organized by the Monumenta Serica Institute at Sankt Augustin, Germany, on “From Kaifeng … to Shanghai – Jews in China.”

Leslie’s active research on Judaism in China was triggered by the suggestion of L. Carrington Goodrich to contribute an article to the Dictionary of Ming Biography (1976). At first sight it seemed to him that the few original documents were already treated exhaustively by earlier authors, like William Charles White and Jérôme Tobar S.J. Closer inspection showed that they needed a careful revision and retranslation. Also, a few things had been overlooked, including a document in the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Therefore, the importance of Leslie’s contributions to the history of Judaism in China is in a reevaluation and comprehensive treatment of the extant material, supplemented with a collection of contributions by western authors, mainly Jesuit missionaries on the subject, and a rather exhaustive bibliography of sources and secondary literature. Leslie’s interest in Islam in China is not surprising in connection with his research on Judaism. At the beginning stood the valuable translation of Father Palladij’s mentioned preface. The logical next step would have been to publish the whole book in an annotated translation but this may not have been possible. The following publication was the seminal Islamic Literature in Chinese, which made extensive use of the Isaac Mason (1870–1939) collection in the New York Public Library, which was known on account of the collector’s own published title list; but the books themselves had been catalogued, probably for want of the necessary language command, on one (1) catalogue card under the title of A Collection of Chinese Mohammedan Books and, consequently, filed in the alphabet under “A.” It then took 25 years until the next milestone was published in Sankt Augustin, the handbook Islam in Traditional China, in cooperation with two colleagues and facilitated by a funded project.

It is largely to the credit of Donald Leslie that nowadays the study of Judaism and Islam in China is resting on a firm basis and is continually expanding.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hartmut Walravens

Hartmut Walravens was Library Director (Berlin State Library) and Privatdozent (lecturer) at the Freie Universität Berlin. His main research areas are: Qing dynasty, Manchu literature, history of printing in East Asia, portrait painting in Qianlong time, science transfer between China and Europe, and history of Oriental studies. He is author of numerous contributions on the above topics and editor of many books. Recent publications include: Epische Erzählungen der Hezhe: Gesammelt von Ling Chunsheng (Johnson Ling). Aus dem Chinesischen übersetzt von Bruno J. Richtsfeld. Bearbeitet und herausgegeben von Hartmut Walravens (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2022); Gelehrtenbriefe an den Mongolisten Bernhard Jülg (1825–1886) (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2022); “Polyglot Names of Imperial Horses and Dogs,” in: Religion and State in the Altaic World: Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Permanent International Altaistic Conference (PIAC), Friedensau, Germany, August 18–23, 2019, ed. Oliver Corff (Berlin – Boston: De Gruyter, 2022), pp. 199–222.

Notes

1 The date was kindly confirmed by Jonathan Leslie. The author owes particular gratitude to Dr. Barbara Hoster, of the Monumenta Serica editorial staff, for valuable advice and information.

2 Leslie's autobiographical account Not a Bowl of Chicken Soup (cited as: Memoirs), p. 83.

3 Memoirs, p. 101. The name is spelt Tchernikowsky, internet citations give Tchernichowsky.

4 See Memoirs, p. 112; his Ph.D. certificate is printed on p. 114, showing the grade “mention trés honorable.”

5 Memoirs, p. 13.

6 OE 23 (1976), pp. 245–260.